The PC Gaming Alliance says the global PC games market grew to over $18 billion in 2011.

Yes, the PC Gaming Alliance is still a thing and so is PC gaming, according to a new "Horizons" report put together for the PCGA by research firm DFC Intelligence. The market showed "surprisingly strong" year-over-year growth of 15 percent in 2011, achieving a record value of $18.6 billion. China led the way with 27 percent growth, accounting for $6 billion in revenue all on its own, while the U.S., U.K., Japan, Korea and Germany, despite being "mature markets," collectively posted 11 percent growth overall with revenues totaling $8 billion.

Much of the revenue growth came from expected sources. Zynga and Nexon each pulled in about $1.1 billion for the year, primarily from PC games, while free-to-play proved to be another major source of income, particularly in Asia. But while the rise of F2P has led to many predictions of the death of the subscription model, the PCGA report singles out Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic as games that have "enjoyed very strong sales." Other big PC success stories include Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed: Revelations and "sports games" from EA and Konami.

But the real savior of the market, which should come as no surprise, is the advent of digital distribution. "The PC Gaming juggernaut continues unabated across the industry and geographic boundaries. While reports of gaming sales at retail show signs of struggle, the impact hasn't been as great for PC gaming, which had an earlier adoption of newer formats, business models and delivery with digital distribution, free-to-play and subscriptions fueling PC gaming's strong global growth," said PC Gaming Alliance President Matt Ployhar.

"For example, Valve's market-leading Steam digital distribution service now reports over 40 million users, and traditional retailers are following suit by investing in this space more heavily, such as GameStop's acquisition of the Impulse digital distribution service," he continued. "Not only investment dollars, but real revenue and profits, are now being generated solely from purely digital business models, formats, and delivery."

...although I can see DRM becoming the problem that swings the growth/contraction of PC gaming back towards contraction. It used to be compication and price, soon it's just going to be accessing your game.

I think this is directly attributed to the unusually long console generation were in.

Also that image is in desperate need of an update. Duke Nukem Forever will not be remembered for being a classic 90's shooter put in stasis for 10 years, Spore probably wont be remembered at all until someone brings up SecuROM and Bioshock was a multiplatform release, so championing it as a high point in PC gaming seems a bit pointless.

While shooters, RPGs, and racing games have clearly shift to the console, simulation, RTS, TBS, and MMOs haven't been able to get off the mouse and keyboard. Only Sony has even been attempting to merge the two (Dust 417 anyone?), but that's a relatively minor game with a MMO already attached to it.

The Gentleman:While shooters, RPGs, and racing games have clearly shift to the console, simulation, RTS, TBS, and MMOs haven't been able to get off the mouse and keyboard. Only Sony has even been attempting to merge the two (Dust 417 anyone?), but that's a relatively minor game with a MMO already attached to it.

Yeah, some genres just can't seem to make the switch. Maybe it's because of functionality? For instance, fighting games (Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat) just plain work better with controllers, and the buttons seem to lend themselves to combos better. RTS games though, tend to work better with a mouse (Halo Wars, in my opinion, would've been better off with one).

Shooters shifting to consoles weirded me out at first though. On one hand, I think that the mouse offers better aiming capabities, but maybe the control sticks on a controller offer better movement control as a trade off? I dunno.

For a dying market that will vanish off the face of the Earth any year now this seems pretty unlikely. Clearly someone crunched the numbers wrong and we're all going to be playing consoles exclusively by 2014. Right?

Every single time I fall in love with pc gaming again, my ass gets burnt by some derped up game that I pay full price for and have to spend hours slogging through forums and back ally hardware sites trying to deduce why oh why me.

I can't complain because it costs a lot less than console games, but whoever determines system specifications is a joke. Recommended settings should be, the game on full bore ultra settings and really test out the problems. They should be hitting the tech builders to build some sort of unity so there isn't so much variation that leads to powerful pc's derping up early current gen games in spite of being way way more beefy.

But maybe that is because my pc can run skyrim, deus ex, bfbc2, crysis on ultra and high, and then darksiders on low res chugs like a cup of crushed glass and expired cream. How on earth did they get allowed to release a video game with visual settings of resolution and vsynch, hate me some console ports.

Speaking as someone who was once a console gamer predominantly but is now beginning to shift towards PC gaming due to my growing disillusionment with console gaming, this feels like very fitting timing for this news.

For instance, fighting games (Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat) just plain work better with controllers, and the buttons seem to lend themselves to combos better.

Yes, if only you could use controllers on a PC. Oh, wait....

Without getting into too much PC snobbery, this is one thing I really like about PC's. The general ability to use what ever controller you think is best for the type of game you are playing.

Did I do something to offend you, or is that your normal sarcastic tone?

But it's true, I didn't think about being able to use a controller. In fact, that the average consumer doesn't think about using a controller for their PC is probably one of the reasons there are so few fighting games on the platform. For a console, controllers are required. For a pc, they're an alternative.

For instance, fighting games (Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat) just plain work better with controllers, and the buttons seem to lend themselves to combos better.

Yes, if only you could use controllers on a PC. Oh, wait....

Without getting into too much PC snobbery, this is one thing I really like about PC's. The general ability to use what ever controller you think is best for the type of game you are playing.

Did I do something to offend you, or is that your normal sarcastic tone?

But it's true, I didn't think about being able to use a controller. In fact, that the average consumer doesn't think about using a controller for their PC is probably one of the reasons there are so few fighting games on the platform. For a console, controllers are required. For a pc, they're an alternative.

All right the sarcasm might have been a bit harsh, but it is fact I have to repeat quite often because, as you said, people seem unaware that you can use other things than mouse and keyboard on the PC.

In fact you can use every controller out there on PC. Xbox & PS controllers, wheels, joysticks, motion controllers including Kinect and even Wii remote. And even if your favourite game does not support your controller of choice natively, there is always a 3rd party mod that will make it work. Maximum choice. Should probably be the PC's motto.

Without getting into too much PC snobbery, this is one thing I really like about PC's. The general ability to use what ever controller you think is best for the type of game you are playing.

Did I do something to offend you, or is that your normal sarcastic tone?

But it's true, I didn't think about being able to use a controller. In fact, that the average consumer doesn't think about using a controller for their PC is probably one of the reasons there are so few fighting games on the platform. For a console, controllers are required. For a pc, they're an alternative.

All right the sarcasm might have been a bit harsh, but it is fact I have to repeat quite often because, as you said, people seem unaware that you can use other things than mouse and keyboard on the PC.

In fact you can use every controller out there on PC. Xbox & PS controllers, wheels, joysticks, motion controllers including Kinect and even Wii remote. And even if your favourite game does not support your controller of choice natively, there is always a 3rd party mod that will make it work. Maximum choice. Should probably be the PC's motto.

Indeed. Now all we have to do is inform the masses, and we can eliminate the inferior console races once and for all!

Without getting into too much PC snobbery, this is one thing I really like about PC's. The general ability to use what ever controller you think is best for the type of game you are playing.

Did I do something to offend you, or is that your normal sarcastic tone?

But it's true, I didn't think about being able to use a controller. In fact, that the average consumer doesn't think about using a controller for their PC is probably one of the reasons there are so few fighting games on the platform. For a console, controllers are required. For a pc, they're an alternative.

All right the sarcasm might have been a bit harsh, but it is fact I have to repeat quite often because, as you said, people seem unaware that you can use other things than mouse and keyboard on the PC.

In fact you can use every controller out there on PC. Xbox & PS controllers, wheels, joysticks, motion controllers including Kinect and even Wii remote. And even if your favourite game does not support your controller of choice natively, there is always a 3rd party mod that will make it work. Maximum choice. Should probably be the PC's motto.

Maximum choice when the developers give a fuck and actually support that ability. Far too many games come out with no controller support or sometimes incredibly awful controller support that can't be rebound, period.

The biggest reason that fightin, racin, sports games in general don't show up on the PC more often is because too many devs don't give a crap because they think its a waste of time for them to put absolutely any effort into their pc port.

Did I do something to offend you, or is that your normal sarcastic tone?

But it's true, I didn't think about being able to use a controller. In fact, that the average consumer doesn't think about using a controller for their PC is probably one of the reasons there are so few fighting games on the platform. For a console, controllers are required. For a pc, they're an alternative.

All right the sarcasm might have been a bit harsh, but it is fact I have to repeat quite often because, as you said, people seem unaware that you can use other things than mouse and keyboard on the PC.

In fact you can use every controller out there on PC. Xbox & PS controllers, wheels, joysticks, motion controllers including Kinect and even Wii remote. And even if your favourite game does not support your controller of choice natively, there is always a 3rd party mod that will make it work. Maximum choice. Should probably be the PC's motto.

Maximum choice when the developers give a fuck and actually support that ability. Far too many games come out with no controller support or sometimes incredibly awful controller support that can't be rebound, period.

The biggest reason that fightin, racin, sports games in general don't show up on the PC more often is because too many devs don't give a crap because they think its a waste of time for them to put absolutely any effort into their pc port.

One of the great things about using a controller on the PC is the ability to use a third party program to remap the keys.

It sucks when a console game has a controller layout that can't be changed, but on the PC there are free programs to remap the keys outside of the game, in Windows itself.

In fact, these programs allow things like binding multiple functions to one key (tap, hold, double tap, etc), shift keys, making toggles (e.g. toggle to aim instead of holding down the key). For example, I played Skyrim with an Xbox 360 controller, but since I was on PC I was able to put all 10 hot keys on the d-pad, compared to the 2 hotkeys that are possible on Xbox.

The only reason that we're seeing this growth is that I now have a place WHERE I CAN ACTUALLY BUY GAMES.

All of the big stores, like Walmart have a PC section that has games from 2003, and the electronics stores like Bestbuy or Futureshop have a very.... limited section for the PC. And lets not even mention Gamestop.... Now I don't have to hunt down AAA titles, and now I know smaller indie games EXIST.

Plug your PC into your TV, and compare that with what you get from consoles. THAT is why PC gaming is on the rise. When you play a game at 1080p @ 60 fps with antialiasing on your large screen TV, how you view your current gen console will never be the same again. Sure, consoles are cheaper, sure towers in the living room are a little awkward, but with PCs you get something way, way better, way more functional, without the restrictions of just playing games but doing whatever else you want to be doing with a computer.

I still play SuperStardust HD on the PS3, and use it to play my Blu-ray disks, so it's not totally gathering dust.